Items marked as ‘classified national security information’ have been discovered in boxes kept at the former US president’s mansion
A total of 15 boxes recently returned to the US National Archives from Donald Trump’s private residence in Florida contained items marked as classified, the agency revealed on Friday. A letter sent to a House of Representatives committee, which is investigating Trump’s alleged mishandling of presidential records, says the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) discovered some classified data and has been in communication with the Department of Justice on the matter.
“NARA has identified items marked as classified national security information within the boxes,” archivist David Ferriero stated in the document addressed to Chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform Carolyn Maloney.
“Certain social media records” that had not been preserved by the Trump administration were also identified by the government agency, which is now trying to obtain some of those records.
During Trump’s presidency, his staff “conducted official business using non-official electronic messaging accounts,” the archivist wrote, adding that the correspondence was not copied or forwarded to official accounts, as required by law under the Presidential Records Act.
Some paper records may also have been lost, according to NARA. It said that, although Trump’s staff recovered and taped together some of the papers ripped up by the former president prior to giving them to the archive, “a number of other torn-up records that were transferred had not been reconstructed by the White House.”
“These new revelations deepen my concern about former President Trump’s flagrant disregard for federal records law and the potential impact on our historical record,” Maloney said in a statement on Friday.
The National Archives is continuing its inventory of the boxes, the letter added, saying that it expects to complete the process by the end of next week. Meanwhile, Trump’s representatives continue to search for additional records that must be handed to the Archives.
The House Committee has been investigating Trump’s handling of government papers and other sensitive records during and after his time in the White House since it became known that boxes with such documents had been found at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach. They were located and last month transferred to NARA as a result of cooperation with the representatives of the former president throughout 2021, the agency said. It had previously stressed that “NARA officials did not visit or ‘raid’ the Mar-a-Lago property.”
Under the Presidential Records Act, which was enacted in 1978 following the Watergate scandal, all records created by presidents must be turned over to the National Archives at the end of their terms, and are considered property of the state. An attempt to conceal or intentionally destroy them is a crime punishable by up to three years in prison.
Trump has previously denied the alleged mishandling of official documents, calling it “another fake story.”
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Putin was right, Stoltenberg was wrong: NATO “brazenly deceived” Russia about expansion and a British document proves it
A newly discovered document from March 1991 shows US, UK, French, and German officials discussing a pledge made to Russia that NATO will not expand to Poland and beyond. Its publication by the German magazine Der Spiegel on Friday proves Moscow right and NATO wrong on the matter.
The minutes of a March 6, 1991 meeting in Bonn between political directors of the foreign ministries of the US, UK, France, and Germany contain multiple references to “2+4” talks on German unification in which the West made it “clear” to the Soviet Union that NATO will not expand past the eastern borders of Germany.
“We made it clear to the Soviet Union – in the 2+4 talks, as well as in other negotiations – that we do not intend to benefit from the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Eastern Europe,” the document quotes US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Canada Raymond Seitz.
“NATO should not expand to the east, either officially or unofficially,” Seitz added.
A British representative also mentions the existence of a “general agreement” that membership of NATO for eastern European countries is “unacceptable.”
“We had made it clear during the 2+4 negotiations that we would not extend NATO beyond the Elbe,” said West German diplomat Juergen Hrobog. “We could not therefore offer Poland and others membership in NATO.”
Screenshot of the minutes of a March 6, 1991 meeting of US, UK, French and German diplomats discussing NATO and Eastern Europe
The minutes later clarified he was referring to the Oder River, the boundary between East Germany and Poland. Hrobog further noted that West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher had agreed with this position as well.
The document was found in the UK National Archives by Joshua Shifrinson, a political science professor at Boston University in the US. It had been marked “Secret” but was declassified at some point.
Shifrinson tweeted on Friday he was “honored” to work with Der Spiegel on the document showing that “Western diplomats believed they had indeed made a NATO non-enlargement pledge.”
Honored to work with @derspiegel‘s Klaus Wiegrefe in drawing attention to British documents (cc: @UkNatArchives) from 1990-1991 showing senior Western diplomats believed they had indeed made a NATO non-enlargement pledge. Link below:https://t.co/hep8aCKRrM
“Senior policymakers deny a non-expansion pledge was offered. This new document shows otherwise,” Shifrinson said in a follow-up tweet, noting that “beyond” the Elbe or Oder by any standard includes Eastern European countries to which NATO started expanding just eight years later.
During a major press conference in December 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the West had promised the Soviet Union NATO would not expand “a single inch” to the east, but “brazenly deceived” and “cheated” Moscow to do just that.
Responding to these comments, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance “has never promised not to expand.” In an interview with Der Spiegel later, Stoltenberg repeated that “there has never been such a promise, there has never been such a behind-the-scenes deal, it is simply not true.”
NATO admitted Poland, Hungary, and Czechia in March 1999, just before launching an air war against Yugoslavia without the permission of the UN Security Council. This put NATO directly on the Russian border – the enclave of Kaliningrad – for the first time ever. The next round of expansion in 2004 included the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, placing NATO’s eastern frontier just 135 kilometers (84 miles) from St. Petersburg.
In a series of security proposals made public in December, Russia demanded NATO publicly renounce expansion to the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia and withdraw US forces to the 1997 boundaries of the alliance, among other things. The US and NATO have rejected this, arguing the alliance’s “open door” membership policy is a fundamental principle for them.
